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Fyodor Dostoevsky: philosopher of freedom

On the political and moral lessons of Fyodor Dostoevsky.

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O n December 22, 1849, a group of political radicals were taken from their prison cells in Petersburg’s Peter and Paul Fortress, where they had been interrogated for eight months. Led to the Semenovsky Square, they heard a sentence of death by firing squad. They were given long white peasant blouses and nightcaps—their funeral shrouds—and offered last rites. The first three prisoners were seized by the arms and tied to the stake. One prisoner refused a blindfold and stared defiantly into the guns trained on them. At the last possible moment, the guns were lowered as a courier galloped up with an imperial decree reducing death sentences to imprisonment in a Siberian prison camp followed by service as a private in the army. The last-minute rescue was in fact planned in advance as part of the punishment, an aspect of social life that Russians understand especially well.

Accounts affirm: of the young men who endured this terrible ordeal, one had his hair turn white; a second went mad and never recovered his sanity; a third, whose two-hundredth birthday we celebrate in 2021, went on to write Crime and Punishment .

The mock-execution and the years in Siberian prison—thinly fictionalized in his novel Notes from the House of the Dead (1860)—changed Dostoevsky forever. His naive, hopeful romanticism disappeared. His religious faith deepened. The sadism of both prisoners and guards taught him that the sunny view of human nature presumed by utilitarianism, liberalism, and socialism were preposterous. Real human beings differed fundamentally from what these philosophies presumed.

At the last possible moment, the guns were lowered as a courier galloped up.

People do not live by bread—or, what philosophers called the maximalization of “advantage”—alone. All utopian ideologies presuppose that human nature is fundamentally good and simple: evil and apparent complexity result from a corrupt social order. Eliminate want and you eliminate crime. For many intellectuals, science itself had proven these contentions and indicated the way to the best of all possible worlds. Dostoevsky rejected all these ideas as pernicious nonsense. “It is clear and intelligible to the point of obviousness,” he wrote in a review of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina , “that evil lies deeper in human beings than our social-physicians suppose; that no social structure will eliminate evil; that the human soul will remain as it always has been . . . and, finally, that the laws of the human soul are still so little known, so obscure to science, so undefined, and so mysterious, that there are not and cannot be either physicians or final judges” except God Himself.

Dostoevsky’s characters astonish by their complexity. Their unpredictable but believable behavior reminds us of experiences beyond the reach of “scientific” theories. We appreciate that people, far from maximizing their own advantage, sometimes deliberately make victims of themselves in order, for example, to feel morally superior. In The Brothers Karamazov (1880), Father Zosima observes that it can be very pleasant to take offense, and Fyodor Pavlovich replies that it can even be positively distinguished.

People are not just material objects, and will do anything, no matter how self-destructive, to prove they are not.

In fact, people harm themselves for many reasons. They tear at their own wounds and derive a peculiar pleasure from doing so. They deliberately humiliate themselves. To their own surprise, they experience impulses stemming from resentments long suppressed and, as a result, create scandalous scenes or commit horrible crimes. Freud particularly appreciated Dostoevsky’s exploration of the dynamics of guilt. But neither Freud nor most Western readers have grasped that Dostoevsky intended his descriptions of human complexity to convey political lessons. If people are so surprising, so “undefined and mysterious,” then social engineers are bound to cause more harm than good.

The narrator of The House of the Dead describes how prisoners sometimes, for no apparent reason, suddenly do something highly self-destructive. They may attack a guard, even though the punishment—running a gauntlet of thousands of blows—usually proves fatal. Why? The answer is that the essence of humanness lies in the possibility of surprise. The behavior of material objects can be fully explained by natural laws, and for materialists the same is true of people, if not yet, then in the near future. But people are not just material objects, and will do anything, no matter how self-destructive, to prove they are not.

The whole point of prison, as Dostoevsky experienced it, is to restrict people’s ability to make their own choices. But choice is what makes us human. Those prisoners lash out because of their ineradicable craving to have a will of their own, and that craving is ultimately more important than their own well-being and, indeed, than life itself.

T he nameless narrator of Dostoevsky’s 1864 novella Notes from Underground (usually called “the underground man”) insists that the aspiration of social sciences to discover the iron laws of human behavior threatens to reduce people to “piano keys or organ stops.” If such laws exist, if “some day they truly discover a formula for all our desires and caprices,” he reasons, then each person will realize that “everything is done by itself according to the laws of nature.” As soon as those laws are discovered, people will no longer be responsible for their actions. What’s more,

All human actions will then, of course, be tabulated according to these laws, mathematically, like tables of logarithms up to 108,000. . . . there would be published certain edifying works like the present encyclopedia lexicons, in which everything will be so clearly calculated and designated that there will be no more . . . adventures in the world. . . . Then the crystal palace [utopia] will be built.

There will be no more adventures because adventures involve suspense, and suspense entails moments that are truly momentous: depending on what one does, more than one outcome is possible. But for a determinist, the laws of nature ensure that at any given moment only one thing can happen. Suspense is just an illusion resulting from ignorance of what must be.

If so, then all agonies of choice are pointless. So are guilt and regret, since both emotions depend on the possibility that we could have done something else. We experience what we must, but we accomplish nothing. As Tolstoy expressed the point in War and Peace , “If we concede that human life can be [exhaustively] governed by reason, then the possibility of life is destroyed.”

“They call me a psychologist; this is not true,” Dostoevsky wrote. “I am merely a realist in the higher sense.”

The supposedly “scientific” view of humanity turns people into objects—literally dehumanizes them—and there can be no greater insult. “All my life I have been offended by the laws of nature,” the underground man wryly observes, and concludes that people will rebel against any denial of their humanness. They will engage in what he calls “spite,” action undertaken “just because,” for no reason except to show they can act against their own advantage and contrary to whatever so-called laws of human psychology predict.

“They call me a psychologist; this is not true,” Dostoevsky wrote. “I am merely a realist in the higher sense, that is, I portray all the depths of the human soul.” Dostoevsky denied being a psychologist because he, unlike practitioners of this science, acknowledged that people are truly agents, who make real choices for which they can properly be held responsible. No matter how thoroughly one describes the psychological or sociological forces that act on a person, there is always something left over —some “surplus of humanness,” as the philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin paraphrased Dostoevsky’s idea. We cherish that surplus, “the man in man” as Dostoevsky called it, and will defend it at all costs.

A p assage in Notes from Underground looks forward to modern dystopian novels, works like Y ev geny Zamyatin’s We (1920–21) or Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932), where heroes rebel against guaranteed happiness. They want their lives to be their own. Put man in utopia, the underground man observes, and he will devise “destruction and chaos,” do something perverse, and, if given the chance, return to the world of suffering. In short, “the whole work of man seems really to consist in nothing but proving to himself continually that he is a man and not an organ stop. It may be at the cost of his skin; but he has proved it.”

In an essay ostensibly devoted to the Russian craze for séances and communication with demons, Dostoevsky addresses the skeptical objection that since these devils could easily prove their existence by giving us some fabulous inventions, they couldn’t exist. They are just a fraud perpetrated on the gullible. With tongue in cheek, Dostoevsky replies that this argument fails because devils (that is, if there are devils) would foresee the hatred people would eventually feel towards the resulting utopia and the devils who enabled it.

To be sure, people would at first be ecstatic that, “as our socialists dream,” all needs were satisfied, the “corrupting [social] environment, once the source of all flaws,” had vanished, and there was nothing more to wish for. But within a generation,

People would suddenly see that they had no more life left, that they had no freedom of spirit, no will, no personality. . . . they would see that their human image had disappeared . . . that their lives had been taken away for the sake of bread, for “stones turned into bread.” People would realize that there is no happiness in inactivity, that the mind which does not labor will wither, that it is not possible to love one’s neighbor without sacrificing something to him of one’s labor . . . and that happiness lies not in happiness but only in the attempt to achieve it .

Or as the underground man observes, social engineers imagine a world that is “completed,” a perfect finished product. In fact, “an amazing edifice of that type” already exists: “the anthill.” The anthill became Dostoevsky’s favorite image of socialism.

Humanness, as opposed to formicness, requires not just product but process. Effort has value only when it can fail, while choices matter only if the world is vulnerable and depends in part on our doing one thing rather than another. Ants do not make choices. “With the anthill, the respectable race of ants began and with the anthill they will probably end, which does the greatest credit to their perseverance and staidness. But man is a frivolous creature, and perhaps, like a chessplayer, loves only the process of the game, not the end itself.”

When you multiply two by two the result is always the same: there is no suspense, no uncertainty, no surprise. 

Perhaps, the underground man reasons, “the only goal on earth to which mankind is striving lies in the incessant process of attaining, or in other words, in life itself, and not particularly in the goal which, of course, must always be ‘twice two makes four,’ that is, a formula, and after all, twice two makes four is no longer life, gentlemen, but is the beginning of death.” When you multiply two by two the result is always the same: there is no suspense, no uncertainty, no surprise. You don’t have to wait and see what those multiplying digits will come up with this time. If life is like that, it is senseless. In a paroxysm of angry wit, the underground man famously concludes:

Twice two makes four seems to me simply a piece of insolence. Twice two makes four is a fop standing with arms akimbo barring your path and spitting. I admit that twice two makes four is an excellent thing, but if we are to give everything its due, twice two makes five is sometimes also a very charming little thing.

In the same spirit, a character in Dostoevsky’s novel The Idiot (1869) remarks: “Oh, you may be sure that Columbus was not happy when he had discovered America, but while he was discovering it. It’s life that matters, nothing but life—the process of discovering, the everlasting and perpetual process, and not the discovery itself.”

People are always in the making or, as Bakhtin expressed the point, they are “unfinalizable.” They retain the capacity “to render untrue any externalizing and finalizing definition of them. As long as a person is alive he lives by the fact that he is not yet finalized, that he has not yet uttered his ultimate word.”

Ethics demands that we treat people as people, not as objects, and that means we must treat them as endowed with “surprisingness.” One must never be too certain about others, collectively or individually. In The Brothers Karamazov , Alyosha explains to Lise that the impoverished and humiliated Captain Snegiryov, who in his pride has refused a large sum of money offered him, will certainly take it if offered again. Having saved his human dignity, he will surely accept the gift he so badly needs. Lise replies:

Listen, Alexey Fyodorovich. Isn’t there in all our analysis . . . aren’t we showing contempt for him, for that poor man—in analyzing his soul like this, as it were, from above, eh? In being so certain that he will take the money?

D os toevsky understood not only our need for freedom but also our desire to rid ourselves of it. Freedom comes with a terrible cost, and social movements that promise to relieve us of it will always command a following. That is the theme of the most famous pages Dostoevsky ever wrote, “The Grand Inquisitor,” a chapter in Karamazov . The intellectual Ivan narrates his unwritten “poem” in prose to his saintly brother Alyosha to explain his deepest anxieties.

Set in Spain during the Inquisition, the story opens with the Grand Inquisitor burning heretics in an auto-da-fé. As the flames scent air already rich with laurel and lemon, the people, like sheep, witness the terrifying spectacle with cowed reverence. It has been fifteen centuries since Jesus promised to return quickly, and they yearn for some sign from Him. With His infinite pity, He decides to show Himself to them. Softly, silently, He moves among them, and they recognize Him at once. “That might be one of the best passages in the poem, I mean, how they recognized Him,” Ivan remarks with wry self-deprecation. How do they know he is not an imposter? The answer is that when you see divine goodness, it is so beautiful that one cannot doubt.

The Inquisitor also knows who the stranger is—and promptly orders his arrest! Christ’s vicar arrests Him! Why? And why do the guards obey and the people not resist? We learn the answer to these questions when the Inquisitor visits the Prisoner in His cell and unburdens his heart to him.

Dmitri remarks: “Man is broad, too broad; I’d have him narrower!”

Throughout human history, the Inquisitor explains, two views of life and human nature have contended with each other. Each changes its name and specific dogmas to suit time and place, but remains the same in essence. One view, which the Inquisitor rejects, is Jesus’s: human beings are free and goodness has meaning only when freely chosen. The other view, maintained by the Inquisitor, is that freedom is an insufferable burden because it leads to endless guilt, regret, anxiety, and unresolvable doubts. The goal of life is not freedom, but happiness, and to be happy people must rid themselves of freedom and adopt some philosophy claiming to have all the answers. The third Karamazov brother, Dmitri, has remarked: “Man is broad, too broad; I’d have him narrower!,” and the Inquisitor would ensure human happiness by “narrowing” human nature.

Medieval Catholicism speaks in the name of Christ, but in fact it represents the Inquisitor’s philosophy. That is why the Inquisitor has arrested Jesus and intends to burn him as the greatest of heretics. In our time, Dostoevsky makes clear, the Inquisitor’s view of life takes the form of socialism. As with medieval Catholicism, people surrender freedom for security and trade the agonies of choice for the contentment of certainty. In so doing, they give up their humanness, but the bargain is well worth it.

T o explain his position, the Inquisitor retells the Biblical story of Jesus’s three temptations, a story that, in his view, expresses the essential problems of human existence as only a divine intelligence could. Could you imagine, he asks rhetorically, that if those questions had been lost, any group of sages could have re-created them?

In the Inquisitor’s paraphrase, the devil first demands:

Thou wouldst go into the world . . . with some promise of freedom which men in their simplicity . . . cannot even understand, which they fear and dread—for nothing has even been more insupportable for a man and a human society than freedom. But seest Thou these stones in this parched and barren wilderness? Turn them into bread, and mankind will run after Thee like a flock of sheep.

Jesus answers: “man does not live by bread alone.” Just so, the Inquisitor replies, but that is why Jesus should have accepted the devil’s temptation. People do indeed crave the meaningful, but they can never be sure they distinguish the truly meaningful from its counterfeits. That is why they persecute nonbelievers and try to convert or conquer nations of a different faith, as if universal agreement were itself a proof. There is only one thing that no one can doubt: material power. When we suffer great pain, that, at least, is indubitable. In other words, the appeal of materialism is spiritual! People accept it because it is certain .

“Nothing is more seductive for man than his freedom of conscience, but nothing is a greater cause of suffering.”

Instead of making people happy by taking away the burden of freedom, the Inquisitor reproaches Jesus, You increased it! “Didst Thou forget that man prefers peace, and even death, to freedom of choice in the knowledge of good and evil? Nothing is more seductive for man than his freedom of conscience, but nothing is a greater cause of suffering.” People want to call themselves free, not to be free, and so, the Inquisitor reasons, the right course is to call unfreedom freedom of a higher kind, as socialists, of course, usually do.

To make people happy, one must banish all doubt. People do not want to be presented with information that, as we would say today, contradicts their “narrative.” They will do anything to preclude unwanted facts from coming to their attention. The plot of Karamazov , in fact, turns on Ivan’s desire not to admit to himself that he desires his father’s death. Without allowing himself to realize it, he makes the wished-for murder possible. One cannot begin to understand either individual people or society unless one grasps the many forms of what might be called preventive epistemology.

The devil next tempts Jesus to prove His divinity by casting Himself down from a high place so God will save him by a miracle, but Jesus refuses. The reason, according to the Inquisitor, is to show that faith must not be based on miracles. Once one witnesses a miracle, one is so overawed that doubt is impossible, and that means faith is impossible. Properly understood, faith does not resemble scientific knowledge or mathematical proof, and it is nothing like accepting Newton’s laws or the Pythagorean theorem. It is possible only in a world of uncertainty, because only then can it be freely chosen.

For the same reason, one should behave morally not to be rewarded, whether in this world or the next, but simply because it is the right thing to do. Behaving morally to earn a heavenly reward transforms goodness into prudence, like saving for retirement. To be sure, Jesus performed miracles, but if you believe because of them, then—despite what many churches say—you are not a Christian.

Finally the devil offers Jesus the empire of the world, which He rejects, but, according to the Inquisitor, should have accepted. The only way to keep people from doubt, he tells Jesus, is by miracle , mystery (just believe us, we know), and authority , which universal empire would ensure. Only a few strong people are capable of freedom, the Inquisitor explains, so your philosophy condemns the overwhelming portion of humanity to misery. And so, the Inquisitor chillingly concludes, we “have corrected Thy work.”

In The Possessed (1871), Dostoevsky predicts with astonishing accuracy what totalitarianism would be in practice. In Karamazov he asks whether the socialist idea is good even in theory. The revolutionaries in The Possessed are despicable, but the Inquisitor, on the contrary, is entirely selfless. He knows that he will go to hell for corrupting Jesus’s teaching, but he is willing to do so out of love for humanity. In short, he betrays Christ for Christian reasons! Indeed, he outdoes Christ, who gave his earthly life, by sacrificing his eternal life. Dostoevsky sharpens these paradoxes as much as possible. With his unmatched intellectual integrity, he portrays the best possible socialist while elucidating arguments for socialism more profoundly than real socialists ever did.

Would you choose to surrender all choice in exchange for a guarantee of happiness?

Alyosha at last exclaims: “your poem is in praise of Jesus, not in blame of him, as you meant it to be!” Since all the arguments have come from the Inquisitor, and Jesus has uttered not a word in response, how can that be? Ask yourself: having heard the Inquisitor’s arguments, would you choose to surrender all choice in exchange for a guarantee of happiness? Would you have everything decided for you by some wise substitute for parents and remain a perpetual child? Or is there something higher than mere contentment? I have asked my students this question for years, and none has agreed to accept the Inquisitor’s bargain.

W e live in a world where the Inquisitor’s way of thinking grows increasingly attractive. Social scientists and philosophers assume that people are simply complicated material objects, no more capable of genuine surprise than the laws of nature are capable of suspending themselves. Intellectuals, ever more certain that they know how to achieve justice and make people happy, find the freedom of others an obstacle to human well-being.

For Dostoevsky, by contrast, freedom, responsibility, and the potential for surprise define the human essence. That essence makes possible everything of value. The human soul is “so little known, so obscure to science, and so mysterious, that there are not and cannot be either physicians or final judges,” only unfinalizable people under the God who made them free.

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This article originally appeared in The New Criterion , Volume 39 Number 5, on page 4

Copyright © 2021 The New Criterion | www.newcriterion.com

https://newcriterion.com/article/fyodor-dostoevsky-philosopher-of-freedom/

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Dostoevsky; a collection of critical essays

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Fyodor Dostoevsky

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was born October 30, 1821, in Moscow's Hospital for the Poor. He was the second of seven children born to a former army surgeon, who was murdered in 1839 when his own serfs poured vodka down his throat until he died.

Following a boarding school education in Moscow with his older brother Mikhail, Fyodor was admitted to the Academy of Military Engineers in St. Petersburg in 1838. He completed his studies in 1843, graduating as a lieutenant, but was quickly...

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Fyodor Dostoevsky Essays

The inquisition and the quadrillion miles claudia herr, the brothers karamazov.

"You see, like you, I suffer from the fantastic and so I love the realism of earth. Here, with you, everything is circumscribed, here all is formulated and geometrical, while we have nothing but indeterminate questions!"(said to Ivan by "The...

Religiosity and Freedom in The Brothers Karamazov Sunny Hwang

The chapter entitled "The Grand Inquisitor" is unquestionably an integral part of The Brothers Karamazov. The poem allows Ivan to express many of the reasons that he cannot accept certain aspects of Christ's behavior, the existence of God, and...

Laceration in The Brothers Karamazov Nathan Grow

In his essay, "The Brothers Karamazov: Idea and Technique" Edward Wasiolek examines two aspects of Dostoevsky's work. He begins with an exposition of the scene in Elder Zosima's cell and Ivan's internal struggles with religion, and then follows...

Russia and The Brothers Karamazov Anonymous

The Brothers Karamazov , by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, exaggerates the extremes of Russia, saying that "[Russians] need continually...two extremes at the same moment, or they are miserable and dissatisfied and their existence is incomplete. They are wide,...

Submission in The Brothers Karamazov Jennifer Bress

Often, authors develop a central idea in a novel by presenting it repeatedly in differing forms throughout the work. Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov is a perfect example of this technique. Specifically, over the course of the...

Nature of Crime in The Brothers Karamazov Anonymous

Nature of Crime in The Brothers Karamazov

The central act in The Brothers Karamazov is the murder of father Fyodor Karamazov. As such, the novel could be thought of as a crime story, the purpose of which is to find out who committed the heinous...

Will Justice Be Served?: Dostoevsky’s Depiction of Justice in The Brothers Karamazov Melanie Davidoff

One of the major themes of Dostoevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov is the concept of justice, both earthly and divine. Dostoevsky investigates the differences between the two forms and examines several aspects of justice. The novel introduces...

Faithless Fools Anonymous

“That remark you just made: ‘Not to be so ashamed of myself, for that is the cause of everything’ – it’s as if you pierced me right through and read inside me. That is exactly how it all seems to me, when I walk into a room, that I’m lower than...

The Brothers Karamazov: A Psychoanalytic Approach Anonymous 12th Grade

When reading a book as brilliant as The Brother’s Karamazov , one wonders where Dostoevsky’s inspiration came from. According to Sigmund Freud, the novel must not be studied as a fiction but as a science, that being psychology. It seems that the...

The Mystery of Family: Human Truths and Personal Bonds in 'The Brothers Karamazov' Anonymous College

Reading a Dostoevsky book doesn’t give us any insight into the mind of Fyodor Dostoevsky. Dostoevsky almost never makes a blanket statement in his books, and, in general, very few opinions voiced by characters in his novels can be traced back to...

What Defines a Karamazov: How Suffering Links Dostoevsky's Disparate Family Members Arianna Perroots 11th Grade

Each of the brothers in Dostoevesky's The Brothers Karamazov have negative or fatal characteristics that set them apart from the rest of the characters. When broken down, the name Karamazov literally means 'black smear,' which alludes to the...

Crime and Punishment: The Superman Matt Young 12th Grade

In Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s renowned novel Crime and Punishment, the radical theories of Raskolnikov (the protagonist) are a principal point of interest. One theory in particular, that of the so-called superman (a modern appellation, not Dostoyevsky’...

The Attack on Rationalism in 'Crime and Punishment' Anonymous 12th Grade

Crime and punishment.

The novel Crime and Punishment , written by Fyodor Dostoyevsky and published in 1866, focuses on many philosophical and psychological themes. One of the themes is the distinction between rationalism and anti-rationalism. Rationalist ideas are based...

Dostoevsky’s Flawed Critique of Russian Liberalism in Crime and Punishment Anonymous 12th Grade

19th Century Russia saw immense economic, political, and ideological changes. With Western influence pervading Europe, Russian society became fiercely polarized between radicals who strove for rapid reform and reactionaries who opposed the...

Dostoevsky's Existentialism in Crime and Punishment Anonymous 12th Grade

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Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky is a novel that has been deemed controversial, yet notable over the course of centuries. This novel was influenced by the time period and setting of 19 th century St. Petersburg, Russia. Society was transitioning from medieval traditions to Westernization, which had a large impact on civilians, specifically those in poverty. Dostoevsky writes this novel centered around a poor man whose poverty drives him to test an ideology that results in his own detriment. Although this is important, the plot is only part of what makes this novel significant. What continues to make this novel memorable centuries after it was written is how Dostoevsky uses the concept of time to progress the plot and establish information, how his use of symbolism contributes to the message and meaning of the story and its characters, and how his writing has unintentionally embraced and related to different philosophies.

symbolism, nature, time, philosophy, existentialism, ego transcendence

Fyodor Dostoevsky is perhaps the most controversial author of the nineteenth century. His best-known work is Crime and Punishment , a novel that explores the psychological depths of man. At the center is Raskolnikov, a character who inflicts and experiences a great deal of suffering, all because he perceives himself to be superior to the average man.

Crime and Punishment takes place in St. Petersburg, Russia. The time is 1860, Alexander II holds reign, and consequently political skepticism is abundant. In addition to skepticism, the country’s economic state has disproportionate effects on its citizens, as the increasing wealth gap parallels the increase of turmoil in the streets. The novel follows Rodion Raskolnikov, a man of lower class whose poverty leads him to forming an idea and testing its validity. This theory is that certain men are exempt from laws created by society, as their actions against these laws are done for the greater good. In order to test this theory, Raskolnikov forms a plan to murder Alyona Ivanovna, an old pawnbroker whom he has had many exchanges with. After killing Ivanovna, he ends up killing her sister Lizaveta as well, when her appearance at Ivanovna’s apartment startles his original plan. In a frenzy, he leaves their bodies at the crime scene, and on his way out his mental state begins to spiral leading the readers to follow his psychological decline. 

Around the world, philologists and psychologists alike have studied Crime and Punishment to understand what makes this work essential to literature. Through studies of symbolism, philosophy, and psychology, it is recognized how Dostoevsky uses the concept of time to develop the story, how he uses symbolism to reflect underlying emotions and intentions of characters, and how different ideologies may be related to the meaning behind Crime and Punishment. These components used together showcase how Dostoevsky’s work remains notable for centuries.  

Crime and Punishment is a novel symbolic of the drawbacks that society can have on individuals, specifically those who are at a disadvantage as a result of their class or mental state. When Dostoevsky penned this novel, the time was 1866. 19 th century Russia was a transition period from medieval traditions to Westernization. During this transition, many people struggled to accommodate to the changing times. There was unrest in the streets, conflict amongst the classes, economic upheaval, and a lack of concern for those suffering by the government. Those who were of higher class were better able to navigate this complex transition, while those in poverty lacked the materials necessary to accommodate to the coming changes. Previously Westernized countries exhibited unrest fromtheir populations while progressing in societal advancement. There was concern about this potentially translating into Russia’s development. Russia was not exempt from these issues, and Dostoevsky was no help in assuring that peace would be maintained. Dostoevsky’s work concerned people in power when he indirectly made an association between violence and societal progression, and how this may prompt the masses to revolt against their government. Localized current events, such as a rise in domestic violence and murder, also influenced this novel. Due to these real-life events that inspired Dostoevsky’s work, it can be said that Crime and Punishment is an accurate representation of its time period [ 1 ] .

Not only was time period an influence on his work, but Dostoevsky would manipulate the concept of time itself to convey the meaning behind his stories. In Crime and Punishment , Dostoevsky writes Raskolnikov as a character continuously in a fever of thoughts. His mind is constantly running rampant, unrelenting even in slumber. Before significant events Raskolnikov would either flashback or dream of memories foreshadowing future moments. An example of this is before committing to murder Alyona Ivanovna, his subconscious takes him and the reader back to a moment where he and his father witnessed the cruel killing of a mule at the hands of a crowd for being too weak to pull a wagon . From a third person perspective, young Raskolnikov’s reaction to this moment is described hither, “But by now the poor boy is beside himself. With a shout he plunges through the crowd into the sorrel, embraces her dead, bloodstained muzzle, and he kisses her, kisses her on the eyes, on the mouth…” (Dostoevsky, 1866, pg. 57). By preceding Raskolnikov’s murderous intentions with his younger self’s mournful reaction to the mule’s death shows the audience how Raskolnikov has developed over time, and the degeneration resulting from his experiences in life.Time also seems to slow down when Raskolnikov is in moments of heightened emotion , because as he loses the ability to conceptualize, the more feverish his mind becomes. Towards the end of the novel, Raskolnikov reflects on the events that have occurred, saying “after a long time had passed, he thought his consciousness must have kept flashing on and off, with several dim, dark intervals, right up to the final catastrophe. He was absolutely convinced he had been mistaken about many things at the time; the duration of time of certain events, for example.” (Dostoevsky, 1866, pg. 417). This feverish mindset also manifests into physiological symptoms, giving Raskolnikov the appearance of being sick. “He was not completely unconscious all the time he was sick, but rather delirious, in a feverish state of half consciousness. He could recall a good deal later. Once in his room seemed full of people… They had all gone out. They were afraid of him.” (Dostoevsky, 1866, pg. 112). Dostoevsky uses syntax and diction to write these occurrences in a way that mimics Raskolnikov’s thinking. The transitions between events are frenetic, reflecting the tumultuous thoughts that plague Raskolnikov as a result of his actions. Choosing to modify the chronology of the novel in this way, he emphasizes the severity of situations by making the readers feel like they are experiencing the event as well.

In addition to this, Crime and Punishment contains levels of symbolism to enhance the mental conditions of characters . George Gibian explored traditionalsymbolism [2] within Crime and Punishment , and came to find that many motifshave religious roots. Ranging from Christianity to Paganism to Russian Orthodoxy, Dostoevsky’s implementation of images such as water, vegetation, air, and earth come together to express the mental state of the characters immersed in a particular setting. For example, Gibian described how water is used as a symbol of rebirth or regeneration. In Crime and Punishment , Raskolnikov would aimlessly walk about the setting in moments where his mind and thoughts were chaotic. He would end up in symbolically important nature scenes, for instance beside a river that ran through his town, or on the ground surrounded by bushes and trees. When near the water, he would feel the weight of guilt coming from the crimes he has committed. “He stared at the darkening water of the canal. He seemed to be scrutinizing this water. At last red circles danced before his eyes, the buildings swayed, the passersby, the embankments, the carriages- everything around him began to swirl and dance. All of a sudden he shuddered. A wild and grotesque scene saved him, perhaps, from another fainting spell.” (Dostoevsky, 1866, pg. 163). In this scene, Raskolnikov’s physiological symptoms begin to arise as his consciousness fights for contrition. This is important because Raskolnikov’s proximity to water when these feelings arise is representative of the good side of his conscience, trying to push him in the direction of what is right.

While water and vegetation are symbols that typically have a positive connotation, their presence can be used to emphasize the degeneration of one’s mental state . An example would be Svidrigailov, a character whose presence is nothing short of problematic. He strives to satisfy his erotic desires regardless of who may be harmed in the process, solidifying his position as one of the antagonists in Crime and Punishment . Svidrigailov also possesses a dislike for nature. This is shown when he visits St. Petersburg, and in his final night of life he ends up spiraling in his hotel room. During this downward spiral, he hears the sound of trees rustling outside of his window combined with rain. Instead of comforting him, they drive him further towards insanity. “‘The trees are sighing. I must admit I don’t care for the sighing of trees on a dark, stormy night- it gives me the creeps!’” He takes time to contemplate his life, saying, “ ‘I never in my life liked water… You’d think now, of all times, I’d be indifferent to these fine points of esthetics and comfort, whereas actually I’m fussier,’” (Dostoevsky, 1866, pg. 480). He resents the sound of vegetation when having a mental breakdown, and he ends up committing suicide in the midst of a fog that has emerged after a thunderstorm- showing his opposition to growing as a person. The use of nature as a way to reflect internal torments and emotions of different characters shows Dostoevsky’s proficiency in storytelling. Having the character’s surroundings speak the unspoken about what they may be feeling adds a level of meaning to the novel. This implementation of pathetic fallacy strengthens the story while aiding the reader in understanding the message of the text. When looking at the novel as a whole, it is clear nature bridges a connection between the audience and the author, by contextualizing events using the description of the setting where they take place. The narrator establishing the environment before delving into details about actions is a way to indicate to the reader potential outcomes of events, or foreshadow underlying emotions.

Symbolism in this novel does not stop with traditional aspects. Janet Tucker [3] explored the significance of clothing in respect to a character’s religious prospects and how their clothing reflects their beliefs or state of mind. When being worn by someone who has dedicated their life to Christ, clothing is modest and kept to the best of their ability. Sonya is a character in Crime and Punishment who serves as a deuteragonist, being one of the women that only have pure intentions when it comes to helping Raskolnikov. She tries to help Raskolnikov find faith and become a better person, and she does her best to comfort him in his worst moments of mental distress. Sonya even follows Raskolnikov to Siberia when he is imprisoned, despite his resistance to loving her. After analyzing this description of character, it can be said that Sonya’s clothes reflect the graciousness of her soul. She conceals her body in rags because she is poor, although she tries her best to keep them from becoming tattered, showing her values and how she maintains her composed state of mind. Comparing her to Raskolnikov, his mental state is too far distracted for him to care about trivial matters such as his appearance. His clothes are riddled with holes, and he lacks the incentive to fix the damage. An interesting point that Tucker made is how Raskolnikov uses his clothes in his crimes. He wears an overcoat that he uses to conceal his murder weapon and the items he has stolen from Ivanovna after killing her. Considering this, Tucker’s point is validated by the quality of clothing matching the quality of the person who bears it. Dostoevsky using clothing to portend the mental state and values that characters hold is a creative and effective way to give the readers insight as to how they will be progressing throughout the novel. Astute members of the audience will be able to recognize the differences among presentation of characters and base predictions about their actions off of their clothing. It is also interesting to see how characters’ religious affiliations can be observed through their attention to quality of clothing, reflecting how they choose to preserve and care for their items. In contrast to nature’s reflection of emotions, clothing gives insight about personal traits and the morals that shape a character into who they are.

While symbolism is important to developing the meaning behind Crime and Punishment , what makes this novel so notable are the philosophies it both challenges and embraces unintentionally. Existentialism [4] is a philosophy maintaining the belief that as individuals, there is a right within everyone to determine quality of life through acts of free will. It is easy to see how Crime and Punishment can be regarded by many existentialists as representative of this philosophy, but overall Dostoevsky is not one many would like to consider an archetype for existentialism. And, in retrospect, he is not. Dostoevsky’s main character in Crime and Punishment spends a lot of his time soliloquizing his belief that certain men are greater than others. Raskolnikov thinks men like this come to be by exercising their free will in ways that defy the common laws of life, but with the intention that what they are doing will better the world in the end. This idea is the reason behind Raskolnikov’s eventual murder of Alyona Ivanovna, a pawnbroker, and her half-sister Lizaveta. He kills Ivanovna as a way to test if he can be one of these people, but quickly discovers in the throes of his crime that he is not. This misconstrued idea of free will presented in Crime and Punishment can be where many begin to wonder if Dostoevsky was an existentialist. But a conclusion can be made that Dostoevsky’s free will is psychologically based and pushes the boundaries between what is right and what is wrong. Existentialism, on the other hand, is a philosophy centered around creativity and authenticity of the self.       

On a more granular level, while Dostoevsky was not an existentialist, his work shows his agreement with the philosophical concept of ego transcendence [5] . Transcendence of the ego is described as an advancement of the “authentic self” through experiences that result in a greater awareness. Once this awareness is achieved, this person usually begins to see themselves as greater than the average human. This is easily relatable to Raskolnikov’s philosophy that he reiterates often throughout the novel. The way that Dostoevsky sets his characters up for transcendence is through suffering. Richard Chapple analyzed the way Dostoevsky progresses Crime and Punishment by noting the use of the prism of the divine [6] . The prism of the divine includes 6 reasons that people suffer, and Dostoevsky provides different scenarios for representations of each reason. Raskolnikov suffers as a result of “recognition of transgression,” which is his guilt overpowering him after killing two women. It is even more stressful because in this guilt he realizes that he is not the monumental person he thought he was. In turn, he suffers because of “involvement in the torments and suffering of others,” as a result of brutally murdering his victims, followed by “greed and ambition.” Once failing to follow through with his entire plan beyond murdering Ivanovna, the weight of his ambition becomes heavy as it never had a chance at being attained. This dissatisfaction with himself contributes more to his depression than the fact that he is a murderer.

The last three prisms of the divine are “lack of faith,” “pride,” and the “inability to love.” Here, it is important to note Chapple’s perspective on how pride stems into all categories of suffering. Chapple discussed concepts such as clothing, a previously mentioned symbol, and how its relation to pride can be interpreted. He states, “The proud often suffer because of poverty or other seemingly external circumstances such as name, clothing and position. Pride generates a façade, and characters wear masks to conceal an inner reality…” (1983, p. 97). While Raskolnikov’s hubris is his biggest torment, Raskolnikov suffers for all of these reasons, and these intersections are where Sonya tries to ease his pain. When Raskolnikov is in his apartment with Sonya and is attempting to explain his crimes, she reassures him that she will not forsake him as he believes she will, going as far as to promise to follow him wherever he goes, even to prison. When he asks her what he should do, she advises him to go back to where he committed these atrocities, kiss the earth and kneel on the ground, then confess aloud that he is a murderer. By doing so, he is confessing to God and has a chance of being forgiven for his sins.

While religion plays a big role in Crime and Punishment , Dostoevsky’s implementation of Lazarus is predominately referencing the song rather than the biblical story- though that is mentioned. The Lazarus song [7] is a song that encapsulates the belief that the relationship between the rich and the poor should include the rich helping those in poverty by almsgiving. When Raskolnikov is preparing to face Porfiry Petrovich, a detective in the case of Ivanovna and Lizaveta’s murders, he says to himself “I’ll have to play the part of Lazarus for him too,” ( Crime and Punishment , 237). When Raskolnikov says this, he means that he is going to have to embrace his situation as a poor, college dropout, as a way to appear more innocent to Petrovich. This manipulation is seen from the side of poor people such as Raskolnikov, but also from those of wealth.

Raskolnikov’s sister, Dunya, was engaged to a man of the name Luzhin who expected her to marry him out of desperation. When Dunya backs out of the marriage, Luzhin scolds himself for not using his money to manipulate her into staying by purchasing expensive gifts, as opposed for thinking he should have treated her better. It is through secondary characters like these when many underlying messages are being portrayed. While Raskolnikov is the central character of Crime and Punishment , Dostoevsky uses secondary characters as a way to reflect certain aspects that Raskolnikov may be lacking, such as consciousness and an ability to recognize and admit to one’s mistakes. With Sonya, she was a part of a family that forced her into prostitution because they were too poor to provide for her, with a father who was too drunk to care. Marmeladov was the father’s name, and he is who Raskolnikov first meets in a bar and confesses to his shame about the situation he has put his daughter in. Similarly, Raskolnikov’s mother reduces his sister to working in uncomfortable scenarios in order to be able to send Raskolnikov to college. She feels guilt at this when Dunya becomes the center of town drama, after the husband in the family she works for begins to lust after her. These characters have made mistakes, but what parallels them to Raskolnikov is the fact that they acknowledge their wrongs, whereas he has to find the courage to do so .

Raskolnikov’s struggles with admitting that he can make mistakes like anybody else stem from his beliefs that there are two types of people in the world. He references Napoleon throughout the novel, because he believes him to be an example of how things considered to be bad have to happen in order for progress to be made. Pearl Niemi defines this as “power-cult [ 8] ,” the part of Raskolnikov believing in certain people’s superiority to regular laws. The part of Raskolnikov that cripples him once he tries exercising this belief can be referred to as “child-cult.” The child-cult is Raskolnikov’s emotions and thoughts that challenge the power-cult and ultimately overtake it. This duality within Raskolnikov has an interesting relation with his name. “Raskolot,” is the Russian verb meaning division, or split. When analyzing the schism between Raskolnikov’s feelings and actions, it gives his name a greater meaning and shows how Dostoevsky was very intentional with his work.

Considering what makes a novel notable, Hugh Curtler [9] elaborated on the idea that a novel which can be widely interpreted is what makes it memorable. Curtler referred to the part of the writer that allows for this to happen as the “poet,” because they write without clarification. In this respect, they acknowledge how Dostoevsky was successful at this throughout the majority of Crime and Punishment. Where Curtler thought Dostoevsky failed with this novel is in the epilogue. Instead of leaving the audience to gather their own opinions about certain aspects, he writes an epilogue that confirms what would have been better left unsaid, specifically Raskolnikov’s ability to feel emotions such as sadness, love, regret,etc .

In retrospect, Dostoevsky’s use of time, symbolism, and philosophical aspects in Crime and Punishment each provide different levels of meaning to the story. When incorporating the concept of time in terms of context and story progression, it allows the reader to grasp the importance of the events being foreshadowed, in addition to understanding the influences on decisions of characters. His attention to detail using motifs to communicate underlying emotions and intentions of his characters creates another layer of meaning for this novel, as the interpretation of these motifs make Crime and Punishment different for every reader. And lastly, Dostoevsky’s novel embraces different philosophies, while simultaneously maintaining its individuality from any one ideology. He writes this novel in a way where it applies to different ideals, wherein itself it is exclusive from being categorized, due to its unique central message. This message is one that can be applied to many time periods in history, including the 21 st century. The inevitable progression of societies tends to commonly leave those who are underprivileged to fend for themselves. When this isolation persists, is it unexpected to have people who attempt to create a life for themselves trying to prove that they are worth something, when their government treats them like nothing? Crime and Punishment provides a variety of perspectives for the audience’s consideration. Despite the many ways that this novel can be read and interpreted, one thing is clear, Crime and Punishment is illustrious.

Bourgeois, P. (1980). Dostoevsky and Existentialism: An Experiment in Hermeneutics. Journal of Thought, 15(2), 29-37. Retrieved May 8, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/42588842

Chapple, R. (1983). A Catalogue of Suffering in the Works of Dostoevsky: His Christian Foundation. The South Central Bulletin, 43(4), 94-99. doi:10.2307/3187246

Curtler, H. (2004). The Artistic Failure of Crime and Punishment.  Journal of Aesthetic Education,   38 (1), 1-11. doi:10.2307/3527358

Dostoevsky, F. (1866). Crime and Punishment. Signet Classics.

Gibian, G. (1955). Traditional Symbolism in Crime and Punishment.  PMLA,   70 (5), 979-996. doi:10.2307/459881

Harrison, L. (2013). THE NUMINOUS EXPERIENCE OF EGO TRANSCENDENCE IN DOSTOEVSKY. The Slavic and East European Journal, 57(3), 388-402. Retrieved May 8, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/43857534

Ivanits, L. (2002). The Other Lazarus in Crime and Punishment.  The Russian Review,   61 (3), 341-357. Retrieved May 8, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3664132

Kohlberg, L. (1963). Psychological Analysis and Literary Form: A Study of the Doubles in Dostoevsky. Daedalus, 92(2), 345-362. Retrieved May 8, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/20026782

Niemi, P. (1963). THE ART OF “CRIME AND PUNISHMENT”.  Modern Fiction Studies,   9 (4), 291-313. Retrieved May 8, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/26278717

Tucker, J. (2009). Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment”: Stopping History’s Clock. Russian History, 36(3), 443-453. Retrieved May 8, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/24664577

Tucker, J. (2000). The Religious Symbolism of Clothing in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. The Slavic and East European Journal, 44(2), 253-265. doi:10.2307/309952

[1] Tucker, J. (2009). Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment”: Stopping History’s Clock. Russian History, 36(3), 443-453. Retrieved May 8, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/24664577

[2] Gibian, G. (1955). Traditional Symbolism in Crime and Punishment. PMLA, 70(5), 979-996. doi:10.2307/459881

[3] Tucker, J. (2009). Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment”: Stopping History’s Clock. Russian History, 36(3), 443-453. Retrieved May 8, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/24664577

[4] Bourgeois, P. (1980). Dostoevsky and Existentialism: An Experiment in Hermeneutics. Journal of Thought, 15(2), 29-37. Retrieved May 8, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/42588842

[5] Harrison, L. (2013). THE NUMINOUS EXPERIENCE OF EGO TRANSCENDENCE IN DOSTOEVSKY. The Slavic and East European Journal, 57(3), 388-402. Retrieved May 8, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/43857534

[6] Chapple, R. (1983). A Catalogue of Suffering in the Works of Dostoevsky: His Christian Foundation. The South Central Bulletin, 43(4), 94-99. doi:10.2307/3187246

[7 ] Ivanits, L. (2002). The Other Lazarus in Crime and Punishment. The Russian Review, 61(3), 341-357. Retrieved May 8, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3664132

[8 ] Niemi, P. (1963). THE ART OF “CRIME AND PUNISHMENT”. Modern Fiction Studies, 9(4), 291-313. Retrieved May 8, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/26278717

[9] Curtler, H. (2004). The Artistic Failure of Crime and Punishment. Journal of Aesthetic Education, 38(1), 1-11. doi:10.2307/3527358

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For Dostoevsky, epilepsy was a matter of both life and literature

Saturday, Nov. 11, is the birthday of Fyodor Dostoevsky, one of Russia’s greatest novelists. The author of such classics as “The Brothers Karamazov,” “The Idiot,” and “Crime and Punishment,” Dostoevsky was also one of the most famous epileptics in literary history.

In his biography, “Dostoevsky, 1821-1881,” E.H. Carr uncovered a doctor’s treasure trove of evidence documenting Dostoevsky’s epileptic seizures as a young man, especially during his student years, 1838 to 1843. One of these episodes included a rather serious, generalized tonic-clonic (or grand mal) seizure in 1844, which was observed and described by several of Dostoevsky’s friends. During his 20s, the novelist recorded several “journal descriptions” of what appear to be simple partial seizures. He also described how certain triggers, such as the lack of sleep, alcohol consumption or overwork, brought on his seizures.

Contemporary observers recorded more episodes during the 1840s, when Fyodor appears to have been stricken by several seizures of different types. Most famously, in 1849, he was diagnosed with epilepsy shortly before being taken to a Siberian prison in Omsk. He was sentenced there to four years of forced labor for espousing Socialist beliefs. His seizure activity only worsened during his imprisonment, and by 1853, he was quite debilitated from epilepsy as well as a series of mental health and physical ailments.

During his last decades of life, epilepsy continued to affect his life, work and output. Fortunately for literature lovers, in 1880, he was able to finish his masterpiece, “The Brothers Karamazov.” He died in 1881 after multiple bouts of bleeding from his lungs, most likely caused by tuberculosis.

Interestingly, not every doctor has agreed that the novelist suffered from epilepsy. For example, in 1928, Sigmund Freud, the famed psychoanalyst and neurologist, penned an essay, “Dostoevsky and Parricide,” in which he argued that the novelist’s seizure disorder was merely a symptom of “his neurosis,” which “must be accordingly classified as hystero-epilepsy—that is severe hysteria.”

Today, many neurologists have refuted Freud’s psychogenic claim and have retrospectively diagnosed Dostoevsky with cryptogenic (of no clear cause) epilepsy of probable temporal lobe origin (the region of the brain where his seizures seemed to originate; temporal lobe epilepsy is one of the most frequently diagnosed forms of epilepsy and is notable for frequent, unprovoked focal or complex-partial seizures).

Like many great writers, Dostoevsky wrote about what he knew and how he experienced the world. Not surprisingly, many of his characters suffered from epileptic seizures. For example, he mentions the disease in his 1847 story, “The Landlady,” where an old man named Murin experiences a seizure when he attacks the story’s protagonist, Ordynov.

What is interesting about this description and those that follow is that they do more than merely note a trembling of the body or a loss of consciousness. Dostoevsky describes many of the cardinal symptoms of various types of seizures even down to the sensory auras and the sense of déjà vu many epileptics experience before a seizure and the intense fatigue they often feel after one.

Like Charles Dickens, Dostoevsky (who was a huge Dickens fan) eschewed cliché descriptions of diseases for his fictional world and worked hard to make sure he got the symptoms and disease patterns correct before committing them to the written page.

Epilepsy and seizures appear elsewhere in his work including his 1861 serial story “Insulted and Injured,” which features an abused orphan girl with violent epileptic seizures or “fits.” Dostoevsky also describes characters with seizures in his novels “The Idiot” (1868) and “Demons” (1872).

But the Russian novelist made the most famous use of his neurological illness when creating the illegitimate son Smerdyakov in “The Brothers Karamazov.” Smerdyakov, it may be remembered, suffers from epileptic seizures for most of his life. He murders his father Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov and creates a series of alibis that he ties to several imagined seizures. Smerdyakov later commits suicide but not before framing his brother Dimitri for the father’s death.

There were points in his life when Dostoevsky wrote he was grateful for his seizure disorder because of the “abnormal tension” the episodes created in his brain, which allowed him to experience “unbounded joy and rapture, ecstatic devotion and completest life.” At other times, the author regretted the disability because he thought it had wreaked havoc with his memory.

Good or bad, useful or not, epilepsy framed Dostoevsky’s life as tightly as the “Superman” or Ubermensch philosophy seemed to frame the life of “Crime and Punishment” main character Raskolnikov. What remains so remarkable about this 19th century writer is that he was able to create such great art out of his disability rather than allow his disability to define or defeat him.

Dr. Howard Markel writes a monthly column for the PBS NewsHour, highlighting momentous historical events that continue to shape modern medicine. He is the director of the Center for the History of Medicine and the George E. Wantz Distinguished Professor of the History of Medicine at the University of Michigan and the author of “The Secret of Life:  Rosalind Franklin, James Watson, Francis Crick and the Discovery of DNA’s Double Helix” (W.W. Norton, September ’21).

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Crucible of Doubt

Posted 29/05/2024 by NURPRT Forum

The following post by Austin Benedetto, an undergraduate student at Northwestern University, is the sixth in the series of posts highlighting exemplary work by undergraduates with interests in Russian Philosophy, Literature,  and Religious Thought. The NURPRT Forum welcomes any undergraduate student to  submit academic writing related to these fields to be considered for publication.

In Capitalism in America , Alan Greenspan attempts to explain the United States’ fading dynamism. He provides a few reasons, but the most important is rising entitlements (e.g., Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid). [1] These programs, to simplify, lower domestic savings and thus put at risk forward-looking investments that may yield long-term rewards. The more foundational problem, however, is that entitlements are hard to roll back. Once someone has something, it is really difficult to take it away. Economists Richard Thaler and Daniel Kahneman have extensively studied the “endowment effect,” but the idea can be traced back to Aristotle. In Nicomachean Ethics , he writes:

For most things are differently valued by those who have them and by those who wish to get them: what belongs to us, and what we give away, always seems very precious to us. [2]

This tendency, I submit, applies to more than just material goods. People similarly feel entitled to their respective ideologies. Consequently, they often leave their opinions unexamined.  When someone steps into a college classroom and vehemently declares that their political or economic system is the correct one, there is rarely any doubt in their voice. It is even more troublesome when these same people equate criticism with personal disrespect. They see other viewpoints as not only incorrect but morally inferior. In such cases, pedagogy morphs into fundamentalism and indoctrination.

All of this goes back to the idea of entitlement. People often feel that, simply by existing, they have the “right” to hold strong opinions on all subjects. While this is not necessarily consequential when it comes to something like rating movies, ideology is a different matter. We should be very careful with what philosophies we adopt. This is not to say all entitlements are bad – people have the right to their own opinions – but social and political philosophies ought to be open to careful examination and reconsideration, rather than treated as an inviolable personal possession.

Russian literature helps us to better understand this feeling of entitlement, whether economic or ideological. Surrounded by Russian utopists and nihilists, Dostoevsky observed hotheaded people who never suspected their own philosophies. Dostoevsky, on the other hand, was filled with doubt over even his most essential belief: God. In one of his letters, he wrote: “the main question is the very one I have struggled with consciously and unconsciously all my life—the existence of God.” [3] Despite proclaiming his faith, he greatly struggled with it. This conflict is best exemplified in the Brothers Karamazov where, through Ivan and the Grand Inquisitor, he gives one of the best rebuttals to Christianity. This makes clear that he did not believe in Christ “like a child”; instead, his belief “passed through a great furnace of doubt.” [4]

But is doubt really edifying? Surely it is – and this is where the power of the realist novel comes into play. In the essay “Art as Device,” Viktor Shklovsky describes the purpose of art as the “’enstrangement’ of things and the complication of the form.” [5] In other words, art interrupts thoughtless habit and allows the reader to see objectively as a third party. Shklovsky commends Tolstoy as the master of this form. His method, Shklovsky continues, “consists in not calling a thing or event by its name but describing it as if seen for the first time, as if happening for the first time.” [6]

Shklovsky gives many examples, but a relevant one comes from Stiva in Anna Karenina . Stiva is inattentive, and while “science, art, and politics had no special interest for him, he firmly held those views on all these subjects which were held by the majority and by his paper.” [7] This seems ridiculous to anyone who reads it, of course, but people habitually do this every day. I have read countless Op-Eds nodding in agreement without ever considering the other side. It is only when I read passages like this one from Tolstoy that the routine appears as foolish as it truly is.

Given the obvious absurdity of thoughtless agreement and oversimplification, why do we do it? Joseph Schumpeter, a famous economist, describes this phenomenon in relation to Karl Marx’s appeal. Much of economics is about individual technical insights, while Marx gives a fully packaged synthesis. On this, Schumpeter writes:

From the students who are taught to see only individual trees we hear discontented clamor for the forest. They fail to realize however… that the synthetic forest may look uncommonly like an intellectual concentration camp. [8]

We desire philosophies that purport to explain everything, but life is far more complicated than these theories can capture. By trying to limit the richness and endless variety of experience, we indirectly imprison ourselves. Moreover, in explaining everything simply through environmental or economic conditions, we may “solve” the issue but only tautologically.

To elucidate this point, Gary Saul Morson tells a story about two kids playing around on a sunny day. One child asks: “why is the sky blue?” The other responds: “because God wills it.” This certainly is an answer, but by explaining every phenomenon it in fact explains nothing. This type of totalistic explanation is also what creates that dangerous certitude which so reviles all other possible viewpoints.

We might find a better approach by starting with Berlin’s essay The Hedgehog and the Fox . Investigating Archilochus’s proverb, “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing,” Berlin imagines two types of thinkers. Hedgehogs, like Karl Marx and Plato, have one big idea through which they view the world. Foxes, on the other hand, believe that recognizing life’s infinite complexity is truer to reality than any one “big idea.” This dichotomy may seem unfair to hedgehogs, but it is important to remember that hedgehogs have had a profound (sometimes baneful) impact on intellectual history.

The question now becomes: what does a “fox” look like? Evidently, we need to consciously criticize our habits and ideologies – but is there something more? I submit there is: dutiful and active awareness. This can be best understood by looking at the three Karamazov brothers.

Alyosha, the youngest of the brothers, is religious and arguably dutiful from the beginning – but he believes like a hedgehog. His faith is built upon his respect for the Elder Zosima (a spiritual man) and his belief in miracles. When Alyosha examines his brother Ivan’s motivations, he does not actually stop and think; instead, he merely copies Zosima’s diagnosis. To which his interlocuter interjects, “That’s plagiarism.” [9] Alyosha’s credulity, like Stiva’s, is exactly what needs to be avoided.

Yet, Alyosha soon experiences a reckoning. The miracle he expected doesn’t happen, and great doubt disrupts his religious base. Feeling aimless, he is goaded into the den of a women whom many see as debauched. But this woman, Grushenka, does not act as expected. She is warm and tells a story about a wicked woman who has the possibility for redemption solely because she did one good act: giving an onion to a poor beggar. These small deeds, both the onion and the telling of the story, are not miracles in the conventional sense. They are mundane acts which anyone can do. Yet, they offer a much stronger basis for belief because they are at once ordinary and extraordinary. No longer does Alyosha’s religious faith rest on an oversimplified belief in divine interventions. In other words, like a fox, he becomes aware of the individual trees that compose the forest of faith.

No one explains this phenomenon better than the Elder Zosima. When a woman confides to him that she is troubled by a crisis of faith, he does not dissimulate or give a ready-made proof for God. All the Elder does is prescribe a dutiful way of life: “there’s no proving it, though you can be convinced of it… By the experience of active love. Strive to love your neighbor actively and indefatigably” [10] This is hard-earned belief. Instead of blind faith or simplified ideology, one works for their principles and is thus better prepared to face the world’s contingencies.

Ivan, the middle Karamazov brother, undergoes a transformation like Alyosha, but one that, in its ambiguity, is possibly more revealing. From the onset, Ivan is described as “paradoxical.” [11] He struggles to square the possibility of a caring God in a cruel world. The Elder assesses Ivan’s anguish, saying the “idea [of morality] is still unresolved in [Ivan’s] heart and torments it.” [12] While Ivan is commendable for examining his belief system, he does so with detachment. By signing his writings as “The Observer,” he impersonally remains a step away from truly working through his ideas. In this way, he fails in the active part of ideological examination.

Unlike Alyosha, Ivan does not find definitive redemption. Still, by the end, it can be said that he takes a step in the right direction. After slowly grappling with his guilt over a crime of passivity, Ivan realizes that though contemplation is necessary, reflection, by itself, is not sufficient for assessing value systems.

This change can be seen through Ivan’s encounter with a peasant. Running over to see Smerdyakov, his quasi-accomplice in crime, Ivan overhears a peasant singing a song that is eerily reminiscent of his transgression. He knocks the peasant over and runs away, once again hiding and neglecting active duty. But after conversing with Smerdyakov for the third and final time, Ivan fully realizes his guilt – and on his return, Ivan goes over to the peasant and brings him to the hospital. For the first time, “something like a joy was springing in” the almost always gloomy Ivan. [13]

By taking action, Ivan begins to reconcile with the irreducible complexity of life he had abandoned for solipsistic thinking. All of this leads to a final encounter with his interior demon – an actual devil. Ivan’s devil famously exemplifies the ordinariness of evil, but more interestingly for this discussion, he elucidates the necessity of opposing viewpoints:

Without criticism, it would be nothing but one ‘hosannah.’ But nothing but hosannah is not enough for life, the hosannah must be tried in the crucible of doubt. [14]

Not only would life be less interesting were everything clear, but would belief even mean anything if it was so easily begotten? No, people value something more when it is achieved than when it is freely obtained.

Doubting your core beliefs is not easy, however. As Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexievich wrote: “Courage in war and courage of thought are two different things. I used to think they were the same.” [15] (WSJ). It requires immense personal suffering to speak against the prevailing ideology – maybe even more than when fighting in battle. All of this raises the question: how does one endure throughout the discovery process? Dmitri, the eldest Karamazov, provides a good resolution. After being arrested for a crime he did not commit, Dmitri exclaims he “could stand anything, any suffering, only to be able to say and to repeat to myself every moment, ‘I exist’” [16] By cultivating respect and perhaps even love for life’s complexity, one can better withstand its indispensable uncertainties.

Image: Aleksandr Ivanov, Study: Two Heads, Turning of the Head of the Doubter 1835-39

[1] Alan Greenspan and Adrian Wooldridge, Capitalism in America: A History . (New York: Random House, 2008), 404.

[2] Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics , Translated by F.H. Peters. (London: Kegal Paul, Trench, Truebner &Co, 1983), 206.

[3] Fyodor Dostoevsky and Susan Reynolds, The Brothers Karamazov: A Revised Translation . Translated by Constance Garnett. (New York: W.W. Norton & Co: 2011), 654.

[4] Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov , 667.

[5] Viktor Sklovsky, Art as Device , Translated by Alexandra Berlina. (Duke University Press, 2015): https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/currentstudents/undergraduate/modules/fulllist/first/en122/lecturelist2017-18/art_as_device_2015.pdf

[6] Shklovsky, Art as Device .

[7] Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina , Translated by Constance Garnett. (New York: Modern Library, 1950), 9.

[8] Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy . (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), 46.

[9] Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov , 75.

[10] Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov , 54.

[11] Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov , 65.

[12] Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov , 65.

[13] Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov , 532.

[14] Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov , 539.

[15] Gary Saul Morson, “What Pilate Learns.” First Things , March 2023, https://www.firstthings.com/article/2023/03/what-pilate-learns

[16] Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov , 500.

Categories: Forum of Ideas , General , Undergraduate

Tags: Dostoevsky , Russian literature , Undergraduate

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Why Liberalism Failed

From Fire, by Water: My Journey to the Catholic Faith

Tyranny, Inc.: How Private Power Crushed American Liberty—and What to Do About It

Common Good Constitutionalism: Recovering the Classical Legal Tradition

Regime Change: Toward a Postliberal Future

When you go looking for what is lost, everything is a sign.        Eudora Welty, “The Wide Net”

On an overcast morning in the late 1980s I visited the church across the way from my apartment in Paris. I was curious. The parish, St.-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet, was then the headquarters of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, a schismatic opponent of the Vatican II reforms who had just been excommunicated by Pope John Paul II. Conservative Catholics from all over the city squeezed into the church on Sundays to hear Gregorian chants and the Tridentine Mass recited in Latin—a beautiful, forbidden experience.

After the service a fair number of congregants gathered in the church’s small courtyard to chat and leaf though some of the right-wing books and newspapers that had been laid out on folding tables. When I hovered over one of them, a young man behind it mentioned a shop where I could find more in the same vein. He tore off a scrap of paper and wrote down an address, telling me that the bookstore had no sign—there had been arson attempts at earlier locations—and that I should just knock on the door.

I went, I knocked, I was given the once over, then admitted. After passing through a thick crimson drape I discovered a jumble of overstuffed bookcases lining the walls of a good-size room. Despite appearances there turned out to be order in the disorder: the collection had been laid out chronologically according to the French right’s conflicting historical obsessions.

The first bookcase was devoted to the neopaganism of the Nouvelle Droite (New Right), which since the 1960s has been inspired by the writer and editor Alain de Benoist; his On Being a Pagan (1981) is considered one of its foundational texts. This group is in a sense the most radical, if minuscule, force on the European right because it places Eden so far back in time that it blames the advent of Christianity two millennia ago for Europe’s relentless decline. The next bookcase, though, contained histories extolling Christianity’s victory over paganism and pining for the simple harmony of the monastic Middle Ages. Next to those I found lush volumes celebrating the unmonastic grandeur of the Catholic House of Bourbon. A few bookcases were then given over to the catastrophe of the Revolution, with hagiographies of the counterrevolutionary uprisings of the Chouans and the Vendeans.

Farther down the aisle were strongly anti-German books focused on the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871. After those, predictably, was a large collection of anti-Dreyfusard works, all supposedly proving that even if Alfred Dreyfus wasn’t a German agent, then at least his supporters were. Yet in the bookcase next to it I found philo-Germanic biographies of Nazi generals like Erwin Rommel and of the heroic Vichy collaborators.

Angry books on French Algeria then followed, including memoirs by officers in the Organisation Armée Secrète who resisted the French withdrawal from its colony and in retribution tried to assassinate French president Charles de Gaulle in 1962. The last bookcase contained attacks on the student rebels of May 1968, who had also wanted to oust de Gaulle, though for very different reasons. And at the end, on the floor next to the cash register, was a wire bin filled with cassettes of racist heavy metal music by bands with German names.

A moveable feast of bitter herbs.

It has always been more difficult to make sense of the radical right than the radical left. Back when there were serious left-wing bookstores catering to active socialists rather than leisured graduate students, those, too, were a little helter-skelter. Utopian authors rubbed shoulders with Stalinists, anarchists with Trotskyists, interpreters of the wisdom of Chairman Mao with interpreters of the wisdom of the Albanian leader Enver Hoxha (a Seventies thing). Shelves were devoted to each and every postcolonial liberation movement then active, with many manifestos written by obscure revolutionaries destined to become infamous tyrants. Yet despite the intellectual and geographical variety, one always had the sense that the authors imagined they were aiming at the same abstract goal: a future of human emancipation into a state of freedom and equality.

But what ultimate goal do those on the radical right share? That’s harder to discern, since when addressing the present they almost always speak in the past tense. Contemporary life is compared to a half-imagined lost world that inspires and limits reflection about possible futures. Since there are many pasts that could conceivably provoke a militant nostalgia, one might think that the political right would therefore be hopelessly fractious. This turns out not to be true. It is possible to attend right-wing conferences whose speakers include national conservatives enamored of the Peace of Westphalia, secular populists enamored of Andrew Jackson, Protestant evangelicals enamored of the Wailing Wall, paleo-Catholics enamored of the fifth-century Church, gun lovers enamored of the nineteenth-century Wild West, hawks enamored of the twentieth-century cold war, isolationists enamored of the 1940s America First Committee, and acned young men waving around thick manifestos by a preposterous figure known as the Bronze Age Pervert. And they all get along.

The reason, I think, is that these usable pasts serve more as symbolic hieroglyphs for the right than as actual models for orienting action. That is why they go in and out of fashion unpredictably, depending on changes in the political and intellectual climate. The most that can be said is that the further to the right one goes, the greater the conviction that a decisive historical break is to blame for the loathsome present, and that accelerating decline must be met with…well, something. That’s when things get vague.

Rhetorical vagueness is a powerful political weapon, as past revolutionaries have understood. Jesus once likened the Kingdom of God to “leaven which a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, till it was all leavened.” Not terribly enlightening, but not terribly contentious either. Marx and Engels once spoke of a postrevolutionary communist society where one could hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, and write angry manifestos at night. After that they let the matter drop. Maintaining vagueness about the future is what now allows those on the American right with very different views of the past to share an illusory sense of common purpose for the future.

How, then, is one to understand the radical right today? Prior to the election of Donald Trump, the instinctive response of American liberals and progressives was simply not to try. Journalists who embedded themselves in far-right groups, or scholars who engaged seriously with their ideas, were often greeted with suspicion as agents provocateurs (as I can attest). That has changed. Today journalists cover many of the important groups and movements, and do a fairly good job of plumbing the lower depths of right-wing Internet chatter. Anyone who wants to know what is being said in these obscure circles, in the US and around the world, can now find out.

But keeping up with trends is not the same as understanding what they signify. What so often seems lacking in our reporting is alertness to the psychodynamics of ideological commitment. The great political novelists of the past—Dostoevsky, Conrad, Thomas Mann—created protagonists who make coherent ideological arguments that other characters engage with seriously but that also reveal something significant about their psychological makeup. (A classic example is the intellectual jousting of Lodovico Settembrini and Leo Naphta in The Magic Mountain .) These authors wrote the way good psychoanalysts practice their art in the consulting room. Analysts do not dismiss the reasons we give for what we feel and believe, which might contain a good deal of truth. They are not just waiting for the gotcha moment when our “real”—that is, base—motives appear and our stated reasons can be dismissed (a common excuse for not paying attention to the right). They look at us through two different lenses: as inquiring creatures who sometimes find the truth, and as self-deceiving creatures whose searches are willfully incomplete, revealingly repetitive, emotionally charged, and often self-undermining. That is the skill required to begin understanding the leading ideological movements of our time, especially those on the right.

To my mind, the most psychologically interesting stream of American right-wing thought today is Catholic postliberalism, sometimes called “common-good conservatism.” The “post” in “postliberalism” means a rejection of the intellectual foundations of modern liberal individualism. The focus is not on a narrow set of political principles, such as rights. It is on an all-encompassing modern outlook that postliberals say prizes autonomy above all else and that is seemingly indifferent to the psychological and social effects of radical individualism. Such an outlook is not only hostile to the notion of natural or socially imposed moral limits to individual action, which are also necessary for human happiness. It has also gradually undermined the preliberal intellectual foundations of Western societies that once made it easier to protect the common good against the claims of selfish individuals. The Catholic postliberals would like to establish (or reestablish) a more communitarian vision of the good society, one in which democratic institutions would in some sense be subordinate to a superior, authoritative moral vision of the human good—which for many of them means the authority of the Catholic Church.

In the past decade interest in Catholic ideas and practice has been growing among right-leaning intellectual elites, and it is not unusual to meet young conservatives at Ivy League institutions who have converted or renewed their faith since coming to college. These students often gather at new off-campus study centers funded by conservative foundations and Catholic donors, where they invite speakers and read classic works together. While not sharing their faith, I have had students such as these and I like them. Most are searching earnestly for meaning and direction, and at these centers they have found intellectual companionship. They remind me somewhat of American students in the early 1960s who wanted to escape the air-conditioned nightmare they felt trapped in and turned for spiritual nourishment to important religious authors of the time like Thomas Merton and Paul Tillich—a forgotten chapter in the canonical history of the Sixties.

Like them, the students I meet feel the hollowness of contemporary culture, which is now heightened by the ephemeral yet fraught online relationships they have with others. So one can understand their romantic infatuation with the notion of Catholic tradition and its intellectual heritage, which promise structure and spiritual depth. (Something similar is happening to Jewish students drawn to the Modern Orthodox movement.) It’s also easy to see how they could be attracted to postliberals on the right, who claim to reveal that the source of their despair is not human existence itself—as Merton and Tillich thought—but rather the “liberal project of modernity.” This makes them highly susceptible to dreams of returning to premodern Christian social teachings that would undergird a more decent and just society, and more meaningful personal lives for themselves. This is a vain but not contemptible hope.

The book that first crystallized the postliberal mood was Patrick Deneen’s Why Liberalism Failed , which created a great stir when it was published in 2018 and received an endorsement from Barack Obama. The description of postliberal thinking I offer above is largely drawn from this book. Deneen focused in particular on how the idealization of autonomy has worked as an acid eating away at the deepest cultural foundations inherited from the Christian era, which he believes supported shared customs and beliefs that cultivated stable families, a sense of obligation, and virtues like moderation, modesty, and charity. Ross Douthat summed up his argument well:

Where it once delivered equality, liberalism now offers plutocracy; instead of liberty, appetitiveness regulated by a surveillance state; instead of true intellectual and religious freedom, growing conformity and mediocrity. It has reduced rich cultures to consumer products, smashed social and familial relations, and left us all the isolated and mutually suspicious inhabitants of an “anticulture” from which many genuine human goods have fled. 1

How persuasive you find this description will depend on whether you share Deneen’s bleak view of the way we live now. 2 Most on the postliberal right do. But they also bring into the picture concerns that typically animate the left, such as the political influence of capital, the privileges of an inbred, meritocratic elite, the devastation of the environment, and the dehumanizing effects of endless technological innovation—all of which Deneen interpreted as the fruits of liberal individualism. The postliberals see themselves as developing a more comprehensive view of the common good that integrates culture, morality, politics, and economics, which would make conservatism more consistent with itself by freeing it from Reaganite idolatry of individual property rights and the market.

Though Deneen is Catholic and teaches at Notre Dame, Why Liberalism Failed is not an explicitly Catholic book. To understand how distaste for the liberal present could make Catholicism psychologically appealing, it helps to read Sohrab Ahmari’s political-spiritual memoir, From Fire, by Water . Ahmari, a friend and ally of Deneen’s, was born a Muslim in Iran in 1985 and was brought to the United States by his educated parents at the age of thirteen. In his telling, he almost immediately came to disdain the “liberal sentimental ecumenism” in which he was being raised. He then became a serial converter, a type familiar to ministers. He was first an enthusiastic teen atheist, then an enthusiastic Nietzschean, then an enthusiastic Trotskyist, then an enthusiastic postmodernist, and finally a very enthusiastic neoconservative. (That’s a lot of bookshelves.) It was about this time that his writings came to the attention of The Wall Street Journal , and he was soon working on its editorial-page staff.

Ahmari now sees his political flitting about as an unconscious search to fill a spiritual void. As generally happens in conversion stories, an epiphany arrives and things begin to change. Suffering from a drinking problem and very hungover, he wandered one day in 2008 into a Manhattan church where Mass was being celebrated. As the bells rang out for the Adoration of the Host, he melted: “Tears streamed from my eyes and down my face. These were tears neither of sadness nor even of happiness. They were tears of peace.” It took eight more years for him to convert officially to Catholicism, and by his own account the decision was as political as it was theological. “I longed for stable authority as well as redemption,” he writes, and the Church represented “Order. Continuity. Tradition and totality. Confidence.” If gaining that meant having to accept even the obscure doctrine of the Incarnation, so be it: “Its very improbability to my mind counted in its favor.”

Ahmari is a disarming writer. At one point in the book he asks, “Had I found in the Catholic faith a way to express the reactionary longings of my Persian soul, albeit in a Latin key?” He never answers that, though any fair reader could do it for him: Yes . But there was still one conversion to go: from neoconservatism to postliberalism.

He was initially critical of populists like Donald Trump and Viktor Orbán when they came on the scene, writing as late as 2017 that “the case for plunging into political illiberalism is weak, even on social-conservative grounds…. What commends liberalism is historical experience, not abstract theory.” 3 Within two years, though, he was preaching a different sermon directed as much against the neoconservatives as against the left. Today Ahmari presents himself as a cultural conservative who admires Orbán—the Enver Hoxha of American postliberalism—and an economic social democrat who admires Elizabeth Warren. His latest book, Tyranny, Inc. , is a scathing and fairly effective attack on neoliberal finance capitalism and Silicon Valley’s “market utopianism,” and a paean to unions, regulation, fixed-benefit pension plans, and many other good progressive things. Like Deneen, he sees left- and right-wing libertarians as evil twins spawned by a liberal overclass that must be overthrown in the name of human dignity and an ordered society that would work for the least well-off. His latest project is Compact , a lively online magazine he cofounded and edits where antiliberals of left and right—from Glenn Greenwald and Samuel Moyn to Marco Rubio and Josh Hawley—display their wares.

Adrian Vermeule, a Harvard law professor specializing in constitutional and administrative law, is cut from different cloth. He, too, converted to Catholicism in the past decade, convinced that “there is no stable middle ground between Catholicism and atheist materialism.” The Virgin Mary was apparently important to his decision: “Behind and above all those who helped me along the way, there stood a great Lady.” 4

Vermeule is both more penetrating and intellectually radical than his friends Deneen and Ahmari, which gives his writings a Janus-faced quality. His academic books are learned and well argued, and have a place in contemporary constitutional debates, including Law and Leviathan: Redeeming the Administrative State (2020), which he wrote with his liberal colleague (and NYR contributor) Cass Sunstein. When writing online, though, he lets his id out the back door and it starts tearing up the garden. A little like radical Islamists who speak of peace in English but of war in Arabic, Vermeule has learned to adjust his rhetoric to his audience.

His most recent book, Common Good Constitutionalism , makes a challenging case for abandoning both progressive and originalist readings of the American Constitution and returning to what he calls the “classical vision of law.” This tradition, rooted in the works of the Roman jurists and Thomas Aquinas, took civil law to be a stable framework for pursuing the common goods of peace, justice, abundance, and solidarity for the community as a whole. Rights matter in such a system, but only derivatively as means to achieve these ends. Liberty, in Vermeule’s view, is “a bad master, but a good servant” if properly constrained and directed. These are very old ideas, but Vermeule manages to breathe new life into them in a bracing way that will surprise conventional legal liberals and conservatives. For example, in a précis of the book’s argument published in The Atlantic , he writes:

Elaborating on the common-good principle that no constitutional right to refuse vaccination exists, constitutional law will define in broad terms the authority of the state to protect the public’s health and well-being, protecting the weak from pandemics and scourges of many kinds—biological, social, and economic—even when doing so requires overriding the selfish claims of individuals to private “rights.”

This is a book worth engaging with.

Such is the mainstream Vermeule. An angrier character appears in right-leaning journals like First Things and obscure websites of the Catholic far right. There he operates according to a maxim borrowed from the Catholic reactionary tradition running from Joseph de Maistre to Carl Schmitt: “All human conflict is ultimately theological.” 5 In these writings, liberalism is not a mistaken political and legal theory, or even a mistaken way of social life. It is a “fighting, evangelistic faith” with an eschatology, a clergy, martyrs, evangelical ministers, and sacraments directed toward battling the conservative enemies of progress. 6 Their fire must be fought with fire.

Vermeule is a tired man—tired of waiting for change, tired of right-wing “quietism,” tired of merely being tolerated by the oppressive liberal order that says, “You are welcome to be a domestic extremist, so long as your extremism remains safely domesticated.” 7 (Tip of the hat to Herbert Marcuse.) He wants a radical movement against liberalism that is “interested not merely in slowing its progress, but in defeating it, undoing it.” To his mind, only a self-conscious political Catholicism that distinguishes temporal and spiritual power, but ultimately subordinates the former to the latter, can meet the historical challenge. He harbors the hope that a crisis and epiphany will provoke a revolutionary realignment:

The hunger for the real might then make people so desperate, so sick of the essential falsity of liberalism, that they become willing to gamble that the Truth…will prevail—or at least willing to gamble on entering into coalition with other sorts of anti-liberals. 8

Vermeule is a recognizable psychological type in revolutionary movements: the Accelerator. Accelerators act as scourges to their comrades, whose cowardice, they claim, is all that stands in the way of the revolution. They have historically appeared on the radical left and right as enemies of social democrats and liberal reformers who spread the illusion that amelioration through democratic institutions is possible. Accelerators see themselves as the vanguard of the vanguard and mock their allies’ refusal to “break shit,” as the Silicon Valley mantra goes. Eventually they become mirror images of their imagined ruthless enemies.

Vermeule has not quite reached that point. Instead he has adopted the short-term strategy of encouraging people on the right to make a long stealth march through the institutions of government. (Tip of the hat to Rudi Dutschke.) “It is a matter,” he writes, “of finding a strategic position from which to sear the liberal faith with hot irons, to defeat and capture the hearts and minds of liberal agents, to take over the institutions of the old order.” And the best position from which to do that is within the executive branch, where it’s sometimes possible to subvert the status quo without having to consult more directly representative institutions like Congress or state legislatures. Just as Joseph insinuated himself into the Egyptian royal court to protect the Jews, so postliberals should embed themselves in bureaucracies and start nudging policy in the right direction, presumably until an antiliberal pharaoh takes charge (again).

Vermeule floated these cloak-and-dagger ideas in a critical review of his friend Deneen’s Why Liberalism Failed in 2018. In that book Deneen still hoped to redeem liberalism by shoring up the moral foundations of local communities and educating the young in the priority of the common good. Vermeule the Accelerationist called him out, saying he was entranced by the “mystification” of the liberal order. The counterrevolution is approaching; what are you afraid of?

Deneen took this challenge to heart and responds in his latest book, Regime Change , which reads like it was written by a different person. The tone of Why Liberalism Failed was one of regret, even mourning for something precious that had been lost. The new book tries to sound more radical but is so half-baked that at times it seems a parody of engagée literature, written in a kind of demotic Straussianism. Deneen echoes the old battle cry of counterrevolutionaries that “any undertaking to ‘conserve’ must first more radically overthrow the liberal ideology of progress.” The good news is that “the many”—which he also calls, without a trace of irony, “the demos ”—are achieving class consciousness, but lack the knowledge and discipline to refine their anger into a program for governing. What they need are leaders who are part of the elite but see themselves as “class traitors” ready to act as “stewards and caretakers of the common good.” He calls this “aristopopulism” and its practitioners “ aristoi .” (Garbo laughs.) It is a very old fantasy of deluded political intellectuals to become the pedagogical vanguard of a popular revolution whose leaders can be made to see a glimmer of the true light. Imagine a Notre Dame professor taking a stroll around the stoa of South Bend, Indiana, explaining to the QAnon shaman the scholastics’ distinction between ius commune and ius naturale , and you get the idea.

As far-fetched as the idea of right-wing aristoi making a long march through the institutions may seem, it is circulating at a time when Trumpian activists are using the same strategy to prepare for a battle against the “deep state” should Trump be elected again. The Heritage Foundation, for example, has contributed nearly a million dollars to Project 2025, which is amassing a database of roughly 20,000 trusted right-wingers who could be appointed to government positions immediately in a second Trump administration. The hope is not only to replace Biden’s appointees, which often requires congressional approval, but to establish a new category of civil service positions (Schedule F) that could be staffed with loyalists, which is illegal under current law. Trump had established this category late in his presidency, and the Biden administration was quick to abolish it after the 2020 election. But Republicans could quite easily restore it after a Trump victory, and seem intent on doing so. As the Heritage Foundation puts it in the statement of purpose for Project 2025:

It is not enough for conservatives to win elections. If we are going to rescue the country from the grip of the radical Left, we need both a governing agenda and the right people in place, ready to carry this agenda out on Day One of the next conservative Administration. 9

This notion of social change having to come from the top is, in the Catholic tradition, a very papal one. In this sense, the postliberals writing today are papists in spirit even if they are not entirely enamored of the current pontiff. What is striking in their works is that they almost never speak about the power of the Gospel to transform a society and culture from below by first transforming the inner lives of its members. Saving souls is, after all, a retail business, not a wholesale one, and has nothing to do with jockeying for political power in a fallen world. Such ministering requires patience and charity and humility. It means meeting individual people where they are and persuading them that another, better way of living is possible. This is the kind of ministering the postliberals should be engaged in if they are serious about wanting to see Americans abandon their hollow, hedonistic individualism—not hatching plans to infiltrate the Department of Education.

Jesus implored his disciples to be “wise as serpents and harmless as doves” as they went out into the world to preach the Word. Deneen counsels postliberal moles to adopt “Machiavellian means to Aristotelian ends” in the political sphere. This is a very different gospel message and brings to mind Montaigne’s wise remark that “it is much easier to talk like Aristotle and live like Caesar than to talk and live like Socrates.” Ahmari, ever the hothead, addresses the troops in more militant language, exhorting them to

fight the culture war with the aim of defeating the enemy and enjoying the spoils in the form of a public square re-ordered to the common good and ultimately the Highest Good…. Civility and decency are secondary values…. We should seek to use [our] values to enforce our order and our orthodoxy, not pretend that they could ever be neutral. To recognize that enmity is real is its own kind of moral duty. 10

Faith may move mountains, but too slowly for these Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Seen from a certain perspective, the postliberals do get a number of things right. There is a malaise—call it cultural, call it spiritual, call it psychological—in modern Western societies, reflected above all in the worrisome state of our children, who are ever more depressed and suicidal. And we do lack adequate political concepts and vocabulary for articulating and defending the common good and placing necessary limits on individual autonomy, from gun control to keeping Internet pornography from the young. On this many across the political spectrum could agree. What liberal or progressive today would reject Vermeule’s argument that “a just state is a state that has ample authority to protect the vulnerable from the ravages of pandemics, natural disasters, and climate change, and from the underlying structures of corporate power that contribute to these events”? 11 He, though, has a developed Catholic theory of government to explain why that is necessarily the case. Do liberals or progressives have one today? I know I don’t.

But seen from another perspective, the postliberals offer just one more example of the psychology of self-induced ideological hysteria, which begins with the identification of a genuine problem and quickly mutates into a sense of world-historical crisis and the appointment of oneself and one’s comrades as the select called to strike down the Adversary—quite literally in this case. As Vermeule puts it,

Liberalism’s deepest enmity, it seems, is ultimately reserved for the Blessed Virgin—and thus Genesis 3:15 and Revelation 12:1–9, which describe the Virgin’s implacable enemy, give us the best clue as to liberalism’s true identity. 12

He means Satan.

The postliberals are stuck in a repetition of mistakes made by many right-wing movements that get so tangled up in their own hyperbolic rhetoric and fanciful historical dramaturgy that they eventually become irrelevant. As long as their focus is on culture wars rather than spreading the Good News, these Catholics will inevitably meet with disappointment in post-Protestant secular America, where even the red-state demos demands access to pornography, abortion, and weed. The postliberals will perhaps get their own bookcase in the library of American reaction. But the rest of the American right will eventually be off in search of new symbols and hieroglyphs to dream its dreams.

My concern is for the young people drawn to the movement today. Their unhappiness with the lonely, superficial, and unstable lives our culture and economy offer them does them credit. But finding the true source of our disquiet is never a simple matter, for young or old. It’s much easier to become enchanted by historical fairy tales and join a partisan political sect promising redemption from the present than it is to reconcile oneself to never being fully reconciled with life or the historical moment, and to turn within. If I were a believer and were called to preach a sermon to them, I would tell them to continue cultivating their minds and (why not) their souls together, and to leave Washington to the Caesars of this world. And warn them that the political waters surrounding their conservative Mont-Saint-Michels are starting to smell distinctly like a sewer.

Grand Poobah of the Antigrandiose

‘I Still Would Have Had That Abortion’

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Mark Lilla is the author of The Shipwrecked Mind: On Political Reaction and Ignorance and Bliss: On Wanting Not to Know , which will be published in December. (June 2024)

“Is There Life After Liberalism?,” The New York Times , January 13, 2018.  ↩

For a critical challenge to Deneen’s view, see Robert Kuttner, “Blaming Liberalism,” The New York Review , November 21, 2019.  ↩

“The Terrible American Turn Toward Illiberalism,” Commentary , October 2017.   ↩

Madeleine Teahan, “There Is No Middle Way Between Atheism and Catholi-cism, Says Harvard Professor Who Has Converted,” Catholic Herald , October 28, 2016.   ↩

“All Human Conflict Is Ultimately Theological,” Church Life Journal , July 26, 2019.  ↩

See Adrian Vermeule’s review of Deneen’s Why Liberalism Failed , “Integration from Within,” American Affairs , Vol 2., No. 1 (Spring 2018).   ↩

“Liberalism’s Good and Faithful Servants,” Compact , February 28, 2023.   ↩

“Liberalism’s Fear,” in Integralism and the Common Good , Vol. 1, edited by P. Edmund Waldstein and Peter A. Kwasniewski (Angelico, 2021), p. 313.   ↩

See Walter M. Shaub Jr., “The Corruption Playbook,” The New York Review , April 18, 2024; and Thomas B. Edsall’s thorough reporting in “Trump’s Backers Are Determined Not to Blow It This Time Around,” The New York Times , April 3, 2024.  ↩

“Against David French-ism,” firstthings.com, May 29, 2019.   ↩

“Beyond Originalism,” The Atlantic , March 31, 2020.   ↩

“A Christian Strategy,” First Things , November 2017.   ↩

Reagan and the Apocalypse

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Leonard Schapiro (1908–1983)

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Short Review

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Blackjack Love

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A Time for Jeremiah

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News from the Dalai Lama

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The Fate of the Union: Kennedy and After

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Recently Published Book Spotlight: Rapture

Christopher Hamilton is Professor of Philosophy at King’s College London. He believes that philosophy begins in everyday experience with the problems and difficulties we confront in our lives. However, in his book Rapture he explores moments of everyday life that provide a sense of pleasure, joy or delight, together with a release from the travails and difficulties that beset us. In this Recently Published Book Spotlight , Hamilton discusses these moments of rapture (or ‘moments of being’) that we find in our lives, the aim of his book, and how it departs from his usual work.

What is your work about?

In one of her essays, Virginia Woolf points out that we live most of life caught up in banal, ordinary, and uninspiring quotidian activities: cooking, cleaning, organizing our work, mending something that has broken, shopping, and so on. In this sense, she suggests, we pass most of our life in a kind of ‘non-being’. But, she points out, we find that, despite this, there are in life certain ‘moments of being’, as she calls them, and these she thinks of as moments of rapture. My book takes its starting point from this idea and seeks to explore such experiences in life. The aim is to provide reminders of where we find such moments. The model I take for this as a point of departure—but not as a definition of rapture—is sexual love, where each of the lovers has a heightened sense of the other and also of him or herself with that other. Here there is a kind of loss in the other, and yet, a return to the self and, with this, a sense of liberation from quotidian anxieties.

There are many forms of this rapture, of a sense of opening up to the world and oneself, together with a sense of freedom, and I seek to explore them in the book. For example, I explore Nietzsche’s account of his feeling of rapture when recovering from a period of illness, as well as Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s stay on St. Peter’s Island in Lake Biel, Switzerland in September and October of 1765. Here Rousseau experienced a period of utterly rapturous release in exploring the island and allowing himself to be absorbed in his surroundings. At times, he simply drifted in a boat, allowing the currents to take them where they would. But I also explore moments of rapture in the life of the ski-jumper Steiner, as he is explored by Werner Herzog in his film The Great Ecstasy of the Woodcarver Steiner (1974), where his rapture is bound up with extreme danger. This is also so in the case of Philippe Petit, the high-wire walker, whose whole life is lived in a spirit of rapture, an idea I explore further in the book.

How does it fit in with your larger research project?

A fundamental point of departure for me in my work has always been that life is deeply confusing, painful, and disappointing for all of us. And this is, in part, because we are each disappointing to ourselves, so full of foolishness and so deeply flawed. Certainly, some are more fortunate than others, but we all grope through life simply trying to make the best of a bad job. And without a doubt life is a great deal more problematic than one would imagine from reading most of the works—including the great works—of Western philosophy. I have, in previous writings, tried to explore this in writing about tragedy, aging, the way in which happiness is elusive and not at all well correlated with moral goodness, and so on. It would probably be fair to say that a sense of the tragedy of the human condition underlies all my work and comes out repeatedly, not just in the book of mine that I dedicated to the topic. However, the idea that life is tragic certainly does not mean—or, at any rate, need not mean—that life is not worth living or is relentlessly bleak or the like. As I see it, the issue is rather one of learning to live with the ways in which life is as it is. For sure, for some this is simply not possible—when, for example, their suffering simply destroys them. But for those of us who are more fortunate, the issue is that of trying to live with the difficulties of life, sometimes profound difficulties, and yet carry on with a certain dignity, all the while finding the things in life that nourish us. My book on rapture is just one fragment in an attempt to think through some of the things that can nourish us in this way.

Who has influenced this work the most?

I have always been open to many influences. When I first started studying philosophy at university many years ago I found it odd that my teachers clearly believed that there are texts that are works of philosophy and others that are something else—literature, say: novels, plays, poems, and so on—and that to explore philosophical ideas it is not necessary to know this other material. But it seemed to me then, and it still seems to me now, that, for example, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, George Eliot and D.H. Lawrence, Louise Glück and Philip Larkin are exploring many of the same things as Plato, Kant, Spinoza and others—namely, the nature of good and evil, of suffering and failure, of joy and fulfillment and so on. Of course, there are variations in style here, but this is also so in those texts that philosophers generally unhesitatingly classify as philosophical—think of the difference, say, between Plato’s dialogues, so full of stories, anecdotes, literary images and so on, and Spinoza’s Ethics , with its putatively utterly watertight forms of argumentation.

For these reasons and others, I am influenced by all kinds of writers. Nietzsche has always been very important in my work, perhaps particularly on account of his multiplicity of styles, his sense that he stakes his whole life on thinking and his relentless intellectual self-questioning, even self-undermining. But, in general, I very much like essayistic thinkers, for the essay form, as Theodor Adorno pointed out, thinks in fragments, just as reality is fragmentary. The essay lays itself open to objections and claims no final truth. This is why the subtitle of the introduction to my book is ‘Fragments of a Philosophy of Rapture’—with a nod to Kierkegaard’s book Philosophical Fragments . The paradigm case of writing in this way is, of course, Montaigne, who pretty much invented the essay in this form. No one knows human limitation better than does Montaigne, and no one better captures the instability of a human life. So, although I do not explore his thinking specifically at length in the book, Montaigne’s approach, his whole style, reminds me of what philosophy can be at its best. His influence is there in the book, a voice reminding me of what I do not know. Hence, I have tried in the book to adopt a conversational tone, one that invites readers in and can claim no final authority.

Is there anything you didn’t include that you wanted to?  Why did you leave it out? 

Yes. For one thing, whilst I discuss in the book the work of many figures—in addition to that of Woolf, Nietzsche, Rousseau, Herzog, and Petit I also explore, for example, the paintings of Pierre Bonnard, a short story by Chekhov, as well as some aspects of the philosophy of Simone Weil—there are others whose work I did not include as I felt that I did not have a deep enough grasp of what they do to be able to say anything especially helpful. So, for example, the writings of Clarice Lispector are marvelous and often explore the notion of rapture, but my understanding of her is rather undeveloped at the moment. Again, I would have liked to include the work of Thomas Bernhard, but I am holding this over at the moment for another project on which I am working at present. A more general omission concerns the notion of rapture in a religious context. I deliberately left this aside as I wanted the work to be relevant to believers and non-believers alike, but there is no doubt that the whole religious dimension or placing of rapture would merit close study.

Do you see any connections between your professional work and personal life?

Yes, certainly. As I have already said, I see philosophy as arising out of everyday life. But the connections between my writing, my teaching, and my personal life go beyond that. I came to philosophy as a young man full of burning existential questions about human life. They have never left me. For me, philosophy has never been merely an abstract, intellectual activity. Long before I read Wittgenstein, I had thought there was little point in a philosophy that helped one think about abstract questions but did nothing to improve one’s thinking about everyday life. And everyday life means, of course, at least in part, one’s own life—how one relates to oneself and to others, how one makes sense of pain and suffering, how one finds pleasure and delight in life. In the book, I explore the last of these, in part, by focusing on the rapture that is there to be had in everyday life through attention to small things. We all need to slow down, notice things, learn to find delight in the seemingly insignificant things of existence—I know I do! Nietzsche says that we should start each day by asking ourselves what we can do to make the day better than it otherwise would be and this involves attention to the small things of life—sunlight, the foods we eat, whether to go for a walk or not, and so on. He is surely right that mismanagement of such things is a large source of human frustration and suffering, so he points out the rapture we can find in paying attention better to these details of everyday life. The same lesson is there in Montaigne.

More generally, I see my work and personal life as connected insofar as I have the sense that, through all the reading and writing I have done, I am able to think a little more constructively about my own life than I otherwise would have at times. It is extremely hard to say in what way this is so and the risk of self-deception is very great here, as one can so easily suppose that one has gained some insight which really is, after all, illusory. Indeed, I do not think that there can be anything other than hope here—hope that things are a little better than they otherwise would be. La Rochefoucauld remarks that philosophy triumphs over evils past and future, but that evils present triumph over philosophy. If that is right, it means that all philosophy can teach one is one’s weakness. But that, if one could learn it, would be a great lesson.

• Christopher Hamilton

Christopher Hamilton is Professor of Philosophy at King’s College London. He works in philosophy largely from an interdisciplinary perspective, exploring philosophy’s connections with literature and film. He is particularly interested in the different ways human beings make sense of their lives, or fail to do so, as well as in the resources that philosophy can bring to thinking about such questions.

Maryellen Stohlman-Vanderveen

Maryellen Stohlman-Vanderveen is the APA Blog's Diversity and Inclusion Editor and Research Editor. She graduated from the London School of Economics with an MSc in Philosophy and Public Policy in 2023 and currently works in strategic communications. Her philosophical interests include conceptual engineering, normative ethics, philosophy of technology, and how to live a good life.

• Editor: Maryellen Stohlman-Vanderveen
• everyday life

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